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GOOD AND EVIL—THEIR ORIGIN.
BY PBOR ANDRÉ POËY.
PINIONS are profoundly divided with regard to the origin
and nature of good and evil. For Theologians : God is the
good, and the Devil is the evil. Tradition, Christ, the
apostles, the doctors, the councils, the Christian dogmas,
teach us that God has existed from eternity infinitely powerful, wise
and holy. The world and man, formed out of nothing, are the work
of his hands, and these same hands which imparted life to man, will
also give him happiness in a heavenly home. As the world is naturally
divided between good and evil, evilis the result of a fall due to his free
will, which precipitated man into sin, suffering, and eternal death.
But the omnipotent goodness of God ransomed man from the error of
his ways at the price of an infinite victim ; hence the coming of the
Messiah, the Word, and the Son * * * when divine grace was dif
fused anew over the earth. “ Here,” says M. Littré, “ the dogma is
engaged in obscure questions between this divine grace, predestination,
the small number of the elect on the one side, and on the other the free
will of man, and the goodness of God.” At flast men rise from the
dead, and are judged according to the deeds done in the flesh. The
good are rewarded, the bad punished ; the heavenly Jerusalem opens
its gates, and hell opens its portal for an order become unchangeable,
and a time become eternal. “ Viewed in its ensemble,” says M. Littré,
“ this dogmatism is a philosophy giving enough light to satisfy the
faithful about the author of the world, the world itself, man, his duties
and his destiny, while in its origin it is the rival of philosophy. It is
important to note that each theology emanating from an antecedent
theology, always carries with it a supernatural history. To be inti
mately connected with a supernatural history is the character of a pri
mordial philosophy or theology.” *
Consequently, in the theological philosophy evil is the result of a
fall due to free-will, and free-tvill, according to Bossuet,f belongs to the
soul, which, being an immaterial substance, has the faculty of willing
for its own sake, without the intervention of any motive as a deter
mining cause of its resolutions.
O
* “ La Philosophie positive.”
H&oue, 1867, vol. i, p. 9.
f “ Traité sur le Libre arbitre.”
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This theological conception of free-will is still the most advanced,
for some Christian sects and established churches have, on the con
trary, professed a bond-will, holding that, in the presence of divine
omnipotence and omniscience, man’s freedom was an impiety, a chi
mera, an immorality. According to the Presbyterian Church’s prin
ciple of predestination, the sin being foreseen, man has to submit to
free-will personified in the immutability of G-od’s omnipotence. Men
are therefore fatally foreordained to be, while on earth, good or bad,
according to their celestial missions.
If from this theological or divine conception we pass to the meta
physical or abstract, as found in the most advanced school of Locke,
J. Stuart Mill, and Prof. Bain, we find that free-will, as the theologians
understand it, is a psychological error, and that volition is not a
taculty determined by its own momentum toward this or that motive.
On the contrary, that the resolution urged by the will is determined by
this and that motive. In a word, that it is not motives which obey
volition, but volition which obeys motives.
Thus, according to theological and metaphysical philosophy, the
knowledge and practice of good and evil depend upon the will, and
this last is determined either by itself, independently of all extraneous
causes, or else by volition which obeys motives of some kind. All this,
in the first case, leaves us in the most absolute vagueness about their
origin, and in the second, we are only furnished with a point of de
parture whence we plunge into the greatest obscurity with regard to
the psychological explanation of good and evil, and their mental evolu
tion in human morality.
Theology and metaphysics being wholly powerless to furnish us the
origin of good and evil, lgt us seek it in positive psychology. When
anatomy and physiology were advanced enough in the knowledge of
the simpler functions of the human body, they were compelled to take
up immediately the more complicated functions of the brain and in
telligence. They were at once struck with the close alliance of these
two facts: that everything which changed the organ, also altered the
state of its function. Then it was observed that all the impressions
furnished us by the external world as well as our own internal im
pressions, were immediately received and transmitted by our conducting
nerves into the depths of the nerve-cells of which the cerebral mass is
composed. These cells have then as their irreducible property the
translation of these impressions into ideas and sentiments, their con
servation, their association, and their elaboration into combinations, more
or less complicated, according to the nature of the given impressions.
Although the analysis of the anatomical conditions and physiological
functions of the organs of the brain may in part be unintelligible to
some readers who are not on a level with the latest discoveries in
biology, I cannot pass it over in the conception of the new positive
doctrine which I shall shortly propound. This analysis has conducted
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us to the great discovery: that the brain is at the same time the seat
of the affections, as well as that of the intelligence. The heart has no
other function but that relating to the circulation of the blood and the
preservation of life. Gall reclaimed the intellectual functions from the
vegetative viscera, where they were believed to be situated, to place
them in the brain. Now we exclude the affective functions from the
heart, in order to bring them back to theii’ true place in the cells of
the brain, where they are elaborated simultaneously with the intellectual.
By considering the brain as the seat of the intelligence and affections,
we do not say that it has the power of creating them. The brain
creates nothing; it merely receives impressions external and internal,
and elaborates them. The function of the brain is limited to the build
ing up, so to speak, of ideas and sentiments out of the materials which
come to it from without and within our organism: that is to say, out
of external sensorial impressions, and internal instinctive impressions.
In this respect the nerve-cells of the head have a triple basis: intel
lectual, affective, and esthetic. Intellectual, or that which is attached to
the sensorial impressions; affective, or that which is dependent upon
the needs of individual life and that of the species; esthetic, or that
connected with what is emotional and pleasing in certain auditory and
visual impressions. In this the subjective or internal impression is
always blended with the objective or external impression, and can only
mean the faculty of elaboration on the part of the nerve-cells of the
brain’s hemispherical lobes. All this in the esthetic faculty gives rise
to music, architecture, sculpture, painting and poetry, idealized and
constituting with ideology and morality the psychical phenomena of
human reason.
Now that we have an idea (exact enough for our purpose) of the
anatomy and physiology of the intellectual and affective faculties, let
us proceed to consider from a more elevated point of view, the latter
only, as they are less known and accepted.
We have already said that the impressions which affect our nervous
system are of two kinds: the one, sensorial or of the senses; the other,
instinctive. At present we shall add that sensorial impressions are the
source of ideas, and instinctive impressions, the source of sentiments.
The instinctive impressions are also of two kinds: those which apper
tain to the instincts for preserving the individual life, and those which
belong to the instinct for preserving the species. The instinct of indi
vidual life depends upon self-love, which degenerates by reason of
vicious direction into selfishness. The instinct-life corresponds to love
of others, in its primordial forms of sexual attachment, maternal, filial,
national love, and finally love for humanity, by the preponderance of
altruism over selfishness. Thus, however complex may be our ideas,
they can always be reduced to ideas, the simple products of our sensa
tions ; in the same manner, however complex may be our sentiments,
they can always be reduced to one of two fundamental sentiments.
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EVIL.
Hence the founder of the positive philosophy, Auguste Comte, has
very judiciously divided all our sentiments into selfish and altruist.
The selfish sentiments relate to the conservation and safety of the indi
vidual, and the altruist sentiment to the conservation and safety of the
community or of the human species.
According as we ascend the zoological scale from the inferior ani
mals to man, we always see altruism prevail over selfishness. Among
fishes, which are cerebrally at the lowest point in the vertebrate scale
and have no conception of either family or children, the instinct
remains purely sexual. But the sentiment to which it gives birth com
mences to be manifested in many mammifers and birds; only it is but
temporary in the greatest, number of instances. Among men, the
family raises in the children love of parents, and in the parents love of
children. Afterwards are formed between families bonds of the same
kind as between the members of the family itself. In fine, from this
union and this fraternity, sociability arises here and there, and is more
and more developed.
Now mark the following: it is precisely upon this power of socia
bility, which increases from the inferior beings up to man, that Auguste
Comte has founded his static law, which serves as the basis of the
science of sociology (the present politics). This law is in its turn so
dependent upon the constitution of the brain, that it is effaced accord
ing as the cerebral mass diminishes among animals. This constitutes
among men the foundation of political economy.
Whence man is a moral being, capable of acting under selfish impulses or under altruist impulses, according as these or those prevail.
Barbarous people and certain narrow natures * in the bosom of our
society are found exactly in the former condition, on account of the
small development of their intellectual and affective faculties. Praise
worthy actions spring by the side of detestable ones, and dispute with
them the supremacy. It is only later, when man learns the profound
abyss which exists between selfish and altruist sentiments, that he can
only establish a rule of conduct.
“ Such a rule,” says M. Littré, “ which appears a very light bridle to
repress the passions, is nevertheless invincible. Its force is in nature,
which has created it; and even by this it can never be annihilated, but
is always maintained. Fixed in the mind and become a moral force, it
takes where it is violated the form of remorse in the individual, the
form of reprobation in opinion, and the form of punishment in society
and among humanity.” f
<
According as humanity grows and develops, it forms intermediate
associations of sentiments and rules, which determine and characterize
the different moralities arising in the advance of the ages. It is thus
* Unfortunately every-day business concerns place us in contact with too many
of such selfish natures.
f “ La philosophie positive.” Revue, 1867, vol. i, p. 359.
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that the moral sense, having a foundation wholly physiological and, as
a result, constant, is none the less variable, according to times and
peoples. We therefore see that, for morality as well as for human in
telligence, there is a primitive state destitute of both. In the primitive
epoch of humanity, the morality is as weak and faulty as the intelli
gence is infantile. It has been only in the lapse of time that the senti
ments have been developed, associated, and regulated, without having
yet attained in our day either form or definite stability.
Let us resume our researches into the origin of good and evil in the
three philosophies we have passed in review. In the Theological school,
free-will is a faculty of the soul, without control, and independent of
our volition; or else the free-will is in God, and man is irrevocably
predestined to act well or ill. In the first case we have only prayer,
invocation of the Supreme Being to preserve us from evil, at last pun
ishment or reward in eternity. In the second the bond-will absolves
us always in the evil as well as in the good. In the Metaphysical
school, as its principles always repose upon intimate causes, and not
upon laws, the volitional faculty is synonymous with the faculty of an
immaterial soul in the psychological properties of the brain. It is its
absolute origin which destroys the concrete cause of the determining
faculty of the volition in free-will.
In the Positivist school, soul, free-will, volition, good, evil, and all
the psychical faculties, are the simple result of the transformation of
impressions from without and within, by a physiological elaboration in
the nerve-cells of the brain into ideas and sentiments. Good and evil
become thus unstable sentiments, while the two media (external and
internal) undergo variations more or less considerable; and they can
not be morally determined so long as these media have not taken their
normal course—that is to say, so long as the sociological laws jire not
definitely known and fully practised. Hitherto not a single example
can be found where evil was not in certain circumstances the parent of
good, or vice versa. The proverb that “ there is no evil which may not
become a good,” has here its most brilliant confirmation. .
In the Positive Philosophy, instead of having recourse to personal
or divine absolution always at hand to give us peace, in order to fall
anew into the same sin, our rule of conduct and our moral force, in a
word, are powerfully rooted in the noble remorse for a bad deed, while
in the reprobation of public opinion we impose a punishment from the
hands of society and entire humanity, much keener than the vain
absolutions, punishments, and rewards, personal and selfish, beyond the
grave.
Let it be particularly noted that what we have said above about
psychical phenomena, and about the transformation within the nerve
cells of the brain of external and internal impressions into ideas and
sentiments—that all this is by no means Materialism in the sense of
the ancient school of Epikurus, of Condillac, of Locke, of D’Holbach,
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and of Buchner in our own days. They are simply facts of observa
tion, experiment, and comparison, obtained by modern anatomy and
physiology.
Following the diverse vibrations suffered by inert matter, do we not
see as remarkable effects produced in the thousand properties of heat,
light, sound, electricity, and magnetism ? Are not the physical proper
ties of inorganic matter as marvelous as the psychical properties of
organic matter ? Here, as in the cerebral mass, it is always the inor
ganic or organic matter which is manifested under the impulse of a
form of vibration determined in the diverse properties—physical, vital,
and psychical.
Thus in fine we are in possession of three grand series of funda
mental properties of matter. First—Universal Gravitation, which is
an immanent principle of matter inorganic or inert. Second—Life,
which is an immanent principle of matter organic or animated. Third
—Intelligence and Affection, which form the immanent principle of
nervous or thinking matter.
Having signalized the origin of good and evil according to theolog
ical, metaphysical and positive interpretations, let us now proceed to
establish the static and dynamic laws which govern the theory of hu
man reason.
Hippokrates and Aristotle have shown that there is nothing in the
intelligence which has not come from sensation. This law was later
badly interpreted by the materialists, who suppressed the intelligence
and only admitted the impression of sensation. Leibnitz rectified the
primitive law by saying that there are outside of us facts which we
perceive by our senses. But if we do not wish, like idiots, to contem
plate uselessly these facts, we must connect them together in order to
construct theories and establish laws. This concurrence between the
brain anc! the world for the formation of any notion whatever, has been
established above in the distinction between subjective and objective.
Completing Hippokrates, Aristotle and Leibnitz by Kant, Auguste
Comte has in fine established that the mind is not and cannot be pas
sive in its relations to the world, and that the state of the subject
causes always a modification in the appreciation of the object. All our
conceptions being at the same time objective and subjective, Comte
has thus established his first intellectual and static law: that “our
subjective constructions are always subordinated to our objective materials.”
But as in our greater flights of imagination we never cease to draw
from without the materials with which to construct our fancies, this
first law applies as well to the state of madness as to that of sanity.
In order that the internal may be subordinate to the external, it is not
sufficient that the foundation of our thought comes from sensation,
the sensation must preponderate. Hence Comte’s second law is that
“ the internal images are less vivid and exact than the external impres
sions whence they emanate.”
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“ It is thus alone,” adds Comte, “ that a veritable subordination of
the brain to its truly preponderant medium can be established. With
out such a condition the mental intercourse of man with the world ad
mits of no fixed rule. For our internal impulses come always to dis
turb our external impressions, being on the point, at times, of over
whelming our weaker appreciation.” * Nevertheless this second static
law does not altogether complete the normal state of the understand
ing, for any object whatever may create, according to the diversity of
circumstances, many different images. If these images, for example,
though all inferior to their corresponding impressions, were notwith
standing equal to each other, there would result in the mind an insur
mountable confusion. This is what takes place in symptoms of insan
ity. Comte’s third law following is still necessary : that “ the normal
image is more vivid than those which the cerebral action brings simul
taneously into existence.”
The static theory of human reason is finally completed by these
three laws. The within ceases to have power to disturb the without, but on
the contrary yields to its necessary preponderance. The external order
becomes thus, by its relation to the brain, an aliment, a stimulant and
a regulator, as it does toward all other classes of biological phenomena.
As every judgment we form results from a certain medley of ob
jective impressions and subjective elaboration, we must inquire what is
the exact degree of each of the two elements constituting the normal
state. This .degree cannot be rigorously fixed, seeing that there is no
precise boundary between reason and madness, health and sickness.
The existence of a being allows of variations within certain limits, and
it is only when their extent is overpassed that it becomes impossible.
But we can fix an ideal mean around which the reality oscillates. This
mean which the human reason always tend's to approach, furnishes us
the logical law of the First Philosophy, so well forecast by Bacon, which
consists in this new law of Comte, prescribing us “ to construct always
the simplest hypothesis permitted by the facts.”
Seeing that all our theories must finally end in representing the
world as it is, the brain will become, as far as possible, a faithful mirror of the external order. But to see things as they are, it must be
deprived of all exaggerated sentiments of malevolence, and even of
benevolence. We say with reason that hate is blind, but we also say
it of love, which amounts to the recognition that all excessive passion
hinders us from seeing justly, and forces us to make complex hypo
theses, either to condemn or to absolve. But as the mind, in a state
of unity, can think only under an affective impulse, selfish or altruist,
positive logic prescribes us to guard especially the malevolent impulses,
which are the most violent and imperious. The influence of benevo
lence is likely to become exaggerated only in case of madness, when
* “ Systeme de Politique positive,” t. iii, p. 19.
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the mind ceases to be the minister of the heart, in order to become its
slave. So, to be as simple as possible, Comte has established as an
complement to the anterior logical law, that “ our hypotheses
must be stripped as much of malevolence as of benevolence?’
The ensemble of the three static laws with the logical law of the
first philosophy and its affective complement just given, only furnish
the character of human reason in opposition to madness, but not the
*
stability of opinions whence it emanates.
If the opinions were unstable (even the variations they suffer by
more extended observation, or by the changes to which age makes our
sentiments yield), or if they were not submitted to any law, they would
then be arbitrarily free. This dynamic law which is connected with
the intellectual development of the human mind, was also discovered
by Comte and formulated in these terms: “ All human conceptions pro
ceed from the theological or fictional state to the positive or scientific
state by passing through the metaphysical or abstract state?’
Considered by itself, this law at first appears inexact. In fact, we see
illustrious geniuses recognizing the existence of a superior volition, and
bowing before it, while almost all our contemporaries are at the same
time theologians or metaphysicians in politics, and positivists in
geometry or chemistry. Does the normal state of our intelligence con
sist in employing different methods, according to the nature of the
subject of which we treat ?
A second complementary law resolves this apparent contradiction :
it is the law of the classification of our abstract conceptions into six
philosophies of the irreducible sciences, according to the complexity and
specialty increasing, or the simplicity and generality decreasing of the
phenomena with which each of them deal. The intelligence is thus
conducted from the simplest and most general speculations to those
most complex and special, in the hierarchal order of the Sciences fol
lowing, established by Comte: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology, (this last comprehending psychology,
esthetics, ideology, and morality.)
The first four sciences embrace the study of the cosmological Medium,
or inorganic creation, and the two latter the vital and social Medium,
or organic creation. Mathematics, astronomy, physics, and chemistry
being the simplest, are the earliest emancipated from all supernatural
and metaphysical intervention. Among those who the most resolutely
invoke divine mediation in human affairs, no one pretends to deprive
a railway train of all velocity by means of prayer. On .the contrary,
in biological or sociological phenomena, confined especially to psychol
ogy, or the intelligence and affections, by their greater complexity,
theology and metaphysics are yet deeply rooted.
* Eugène Sémérie., “ Des Symptômes intellectuels de la folie.”—Thèse. Paris,
1867.
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The different degrees of velocity with which each science, according
to its complexity, is susceptible of attaining its final state of positivity,
is a capital fact which confirms beyond a doubt the exactness of the
dynamic law' of the three phases of human intelligence in the inter
pretation of natural phenomena.
But from the moment that the positive method has furnished us
the true psychological and sociological laws, these theological and
metaphysical phantoms disappear from the sciences never to return.
The creation of the sociological and moral sciences conducts us then
to mental unity by a complete cerebral harmony, or, in other words,
to the stability of ideas by the Positive Philosophy, replacing definitely
the two primitive philosophies.
The study upon the origin of good and evil which we have termi
nated, is at the same time positive and negative. Positive, by the
physiological and psychical laws we have established; negative, by the
relative impotence in which we remain for want of a sufficient number
of laws to fix the true limits which separate good and evil.
But a great truth has been irrevocably acquired: 1st, that the intel
lectual and affective faculties have their single and sole seat in the
brain, where they are united by bonds of strict and intimate solidarity;
2d, that the affections arise from internal instinctive impressions, while
the ideas or intelligence are derived from external sensorial impressions;
and 3d, that the instinctive or affective impressions are of two orders:
those appertaining to the instincts for preserving the life of the indi
vidual, and those relating to the instincts for preserving the life of the
species. The first are beyond a certain limit selfish, and the second
are always altruist,
• After the affective and spontaneous faculties of the brain which
constitute human morality, follow the intellectual faculties and rules
which determine human reason. Between these two is placed a third
order of faculty, called esthetic or emotional.
The reason being merely outlined, morality in our day is in only an
embryonic state. Good and evil depend upon false and true, that is to
say, upon intellectual reasoning. We do ewl because we have a false
idea of the true, in the same way that we do good because we have a
true idea of the false. In the state of mental anarchy in which society
is sunk, we frequently confound the noblest sentiments with the basest
passions. For- example, impersonal pride is mistaken for personal self
ishness. We should only be proud of a noble and just action in the
unique interest of goodness, as it relates to our fellow-beings; but if
this pride has no other aim than our own satisfaction, what in the
first case was a legitimate virtue, in the other degenerates into un
worthy self-love. Should one be badly appreciated in his noble im
personal pride, he must never blame the author without taking into
account the extenuating and powerful circumstances which often, alas!
are but very fallacious. After a disappointment, one can only pity the
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object of his attachment, not by high disdain, but by compelling him
to return to better sentiments. In a word, pride can become a noble
and pure passion only on condition of forgetting itself. We have taken
as an example pride, because it is at once the noblest and the vilest
of passions, according to the use, good or bad, legitimate or illegitimate,
which is made of it, and according as personal selfishness or imper
sonal altruism predominates. Thus evil limits good, and they are
transmitted, the one into the other, in the form of perturbation, with
out which we cannot seize the true law which governs these two ex
treme terms.
The cause is very plain: in the affective faculties biology is not ad
vanced enough to furnish us the law of the instincts for the preserva
tion of individual life, and sociology is too much in its infancy to give
us the law of the instincts for the preservation of the species-life. Do
we not perceive in this ensemble of incontestable facts that Morality
is yet in process of creation by the sole means of human reason ?
In a second part we will regard good and evil from the dynam
ical stand-point, its evolution and periodical recurrences. In the first
case we have applied Broussais’s law upon the assimilation of the
pathological state to the physiological (or health), the former differ
ing only in a greater amplitude from the normal state which then
degenerates into perturbation. In the same way the psychical facul
ties of the nerve-cells of the brain may be exalted from the normal
state or the good to. the perturbed state or the evil. So the origin of
evil is .an exaggeration of the good. In the second place I will show
how the periodical recurrences of astronomical and physical phenom
ena, also occurs in morality, as well in the individual as in society.
As in the physical, so the more complex moral phenomena are,
the more difficult it is to foresee the period of revolution, and the
cycle is more extended. The same relation exists between eclipses
and comets of very long periods. The last part of this work is en
tirely personal, although its principles are more or less based upon
those of the Positive Philosophy.
September, 1869.
�A
THE three mental crises
OF AUGUSTE COMTE.
BY PROF. ANDRÉ
POËY.
LITTRÉ has charged Auguste Comte, since his death,
with having changed the method in the elaboration of
his two great works. In his Philosophic positive the ob
jective method presides, while in his Politique positive,
on the contrary, the subjective method principally reigns.
*
M. Littré finds the cause which drove Comte into the subjective
method in a purely psychological effect—in a word, in a mental crisis
experienced by him in 1845, preceded and followed by the following
circumstances:
“Since he finished in 1842,” says he, “the Systeme de philoso
phic positive, he never ceased to revolve in his mind his promised
book upon positive politics. Yet, not until 1845 were its character
and plan settled. This initial elaboration of his second great work
(Comte’s own expression) coincided with a grave nervous illness.” f
M. Littré cites afterwards two of Comte’s letters to Mr. J. S. Mill,
of June 27, 1845, and May 6, 1846. In tlm first, Comte speaks of in
teresting details (necessarily deferred) upon a grave nervous illness, pro
duced, doubtless, by the resumption of his philosophical composition,
which occurred some days after his last letter (May 15).
M. Littré remarks that this letter is mysterious; that one does not
promise interesting details upon a fever or fluxion ; but that this was
really a crisis in which Comte’s mind suffered profound impressions
and durable modifications. He finds this plainly set forth in the fol
lowing extract from his second letter to Mill: “. . . . The decisive
invasion of this virtuous passion (for Mme. Clotilde de Vaux) coincided
last year with the initial elaboration of my second great work. You
can thus imagine the true gravity of a nervous crisis, up to the present
imperfectly known, in which I have run a true cerebral risk, and from
the forcible personal recollections of which I have been happily saved,
without any vain medical interference ...”
In this second letter Comte speaks, not of an illness, but of a ner
vous disease. Before 1845, this disease was indeterminate, adds M.
M
* “ Auguste Comte et la Philosophie positive.” Paris, 1863, p. 126.
f Id., pp. 580-591.
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Littré. “ But the fatiguing effort of thought, as it neared completion,
encountered the impassioned love inspired by Mme. de Vaux. From ,
this time the disease took a determinate form, impressing the
seal of sentiment upon the conception elaborated. So, between pro
found meditation ruling his intellect, and passionate tenderness capti
vating his heart, the obstacles which had hitherto stopped him disap
peared, the scales fell from his eyes, and the subjective method appeared
to him a luminous guide which introduced him at the most distant
future to a humanity altogether devoted to love. From this time his
work was traced throughout; it was only a question of deduction and
combination ; and what greater mind for concatenating and following
out combinations ever existed than his ? ”
Such are the only proofs brought forward by M. Littré on Comte’s
mental crisis of 1845. His physician and one of his three testament
ary executors, Dr. Robinet, does not mention it in his life of Comte.
Mr. Lewes’ objection to Littré is very inconclusive. It is that, if the
great crisis of 1826 had no deleterious effect upon the Positive Philos
ophy, how could the trivial one of 1845, even granted that it took
place (for Lewes doubts it) vitiate his subsequent constructions ? * He
appears to think that all cerebral crises are of like character and have
similar effects. This is improbable, and Comte himself, in the present
instance, asserts the contrary, as will be seen below.
To solve this delicate question, it will suffice to refer to Comte him
self, which Littré and Lewes have not done. If they had, they would
have seen, in an affectionate profession de foi, addressed to Clotilde de
Vaux, August 5, 1845 (two months aftei' his last nervous illness), that
Comte himself acknowledges three cerebral crises, determining their
ch aranteristics and their influences upon his philosophical elaboration.
He traces with a steady hand his life, past and future, public and
private, and invokes his love, to finish his task.
These three crises took place in 1826, 1838, and 1845. This extract
from Comte establishes their existence. “To conceive more clearly the
true general relations of the two crises which circumscribe the only
part of my past career, public or private, directly interesting to you, it
will be useful to indicate a kind of intermediate crisis of less pro
nounced character but of similar nature, determined in 1838, by pass
ing from the purely scientific preamble of my great philosophical
construction to the biological element which definitively constitutes it.”
In fact, the third volume of the Positive Philosophy, closing with
Biology, bears date of February 24, 1838, and its fourth, volume, with
the dogmatic part of social Philosophy, is dated December 23, 1838.
From these two dates, his second crisis occurred in this interval of
nine months.
Comte, in continuation, determines its happy influence upon his
* “ The Fortnightly Review.” 1866, vol. iii, p. 403.
�01’
AUGUSTE
COMTE.
165
philosophical conception, in the following words : “ Although in this
second and principal half of that prolonged task, the social standpoint
had to remain almost wholly speculative, and hence could not tend to
develop in me so powerfully as at present the affective needs, still thai
epoch forms a remarkable phase in so intimate a history of my double
existence. Its principal marked result consisted in a vivid and perma
nent stimulation of my taste for the different Fine Arts, especially
poetry and music, which then received a considerable increase. You
feel immediately the spontaneous affinity with my ulterior tendency
towards a life principally affective ; and further, it very happily im
proved my work in all relating to the esthetic evolution of humanity.
In domestic affairs, this period has some interest as also intermediate
between two essential crises ; for I ceased then, for the first time, solic
iting, while still permitting a postponement of a temporary separation,and signified my firm resolution of making in the future any similar
occurrence irrevocable.”
Comte finishes the estimation of these three crises by a singular
property which has much assisted him in the clear remembrance of
them. One of his small philosophical secrets is to consolidate and aid
every intellectual or affective improvement by joining it with some phys
ical improvement, directed especially towards the continual improvement
of the diet. “ From this principle,” says he, “ is derived all the essentials
of the positive theory of sacraments, of which priestly empiricism feels
confusedly the bearing, as physical signs of different degrees of spiritual
progress. In the same way I can say that the three essential crises of
my double personal evolution, in the years 1826, 1838, and 1845, are
rendered familiarly sacred to me by the durable dietetic symptom that I
have definitely abstained, at first from coffee, next from tobacco, and
now from wine. Such are, my dear friend, the different secret indica
tions which complete the ostensible part of my difficult explanation of
the new character, public and private, belonging to the second half of
my career.” *
Thus, beyond any question, Comte’s three mental crises are fully
acknowledged by himself. The psychological study which he made
upon these affections is curious. Indeed, he states in his public covrses
and in his second work the valuable observation made upon his own
cerebral illness of 1826. An empiric treatment, he says, which pro
longed the disturbance for eight months, permitted him the better
to estimate its different states. He was able to doubly verify his “ law
of three states,” which characterizes human evolution, by going through
all its essential phases, at first inversely, then directly, without their
order ever changing.
These are his own words : “ The three months in which medical
influence developed the illness made me gradually descend, from positi
* “ Notice sur l’Œuvre et sur la Vie d’Auguste Comte,” par le Dr. Robinet.
Paris, 1864, pp. 211-213.
�66
THE
THREE
MENTAL
CRISES
vism to fetishism, stopping at monotheism, and longer at polytheism.
In the five following months, according as my spontaneity, despite the
remedies, restored normal life, I slowly reascended from fetishism to
polytheism, and from it to monotheism, whence I promptly recovered
my previous positivity. By procuring me a direct and decisive confir
mation of my ‘ law of the three states,’ and making me more plainly
feel the necessary relativity of all our knowledge, this terrible episode
aided me in identifying myself more easily with any of the human
phases. The assistance furnished by it to the whole of my historical
meditations, makes me hope that suitably instructed readers can also
utilize this summary indication of a memorable anomaly.” *
These psychological studies upon the three mental crises of Comte
deserve to be taken into serious consideration in our researches upon
the faculties and psychical products of the nerve-cells of the brain.
We deeply regret not having been able to consult the recent work of
Dr. G. Audiffrent, which would probably have thrown great light upon
this question.f It should always be remembered that these three crises
had a very diverse influence upon Comte’s philosophical elaboration.
In the first his ideas passed and repassed through the three great
periods of theology, from monotheism to fetishism, stopping at the
intermediary station of polytheism and vice versâ, until the return to
his primitive positivity. It is, moreover, a curious fact that he has
skipped, so to speak, the transitional phase of metaphysic, which he
does not mention. In fiis second crisis, Comte suffered a first though
small effusion of affection which he interprets as “ a vivid and perma
nent stimulation of his taste for different Fine Arts, especially poetry
and music.” At last, in his third crisis, this affection took colossal
dimensions under the influence of his impassioned love for Clotilde de
Vaux. “ Its influence was mystic,” says M. Littré, very truly, “ es
pecially when death, which soon came, had consecrated the recollection ;
and the mysticism was an aggravation of the subjective method.” J From
this influence arose the fine inspiration of the Religion of Humanity,
the principle of which I adopt as a moral power, but reject the form.
Unfortunately, Comte returned in his last days to a positive theol
ogy, personified in the Grand-Fetiche or the earth, the Grand-Milieu
or space, and the Grand-Etre or humanity ; § nevertheless this
positive trinity overpasses the limits of our poor human intelligence.
“ Comte’s thought,” says M. Littré, “ wavered between fictions and
chimeras ; but the idea of the cultus in the end excluded the first and
imposed the second.”
Comte’s reasoning is as follows : Subjectivity must prevail in the
universal synthesis, and fetishism, having introduced it spontaneously,
* “ Système de Politique positive.” Paris, 1853, vol. iii. p. 75.
t “ Du cerveau et de l’innervation d’après Auguste Comte,” Paris, 1869,1 vol., 8vo.
f Work cited, p. 583.
§ “ Synthèse subjective ” Paris, 1856. 8vo, pp. 840.
�OF
AUGUSTE
G 0 AI T E.
167
it must reappear in the latest period of human evolution which re
produces the initial type. The only difference is that the new fetish
ism will be subordinated to natural laws which the old did not know.
In this case we can apply to Comte his own judgment upon “ Vico’s
aberrations in the strange theory of social circularity, by specially pro
claiming the general superiority of the modern régime over the an
cient.” * M. Littré remarks that this is a “ gratuitous assertion, the
falsity of which is at once apparent, on applying it to biology, in
which neither manhood nor old age reproduces infancy.” Still, it
must be avowed there are many points of contact, yet unknown, be
tween childhood and old age, and hence the saying to fall into infancy,
specially applied to mental affections.
Comte’s life presents three great periods, distinctly characterized :
that of his philosophical construction, that of his political construc
tion, and that of his religious construction. He was, despite himself,
led insensibly from the first to the second, and from it to the third.
In the first he established an objective philosophy for the first time, in
the third he restored the primitive subjective philosophy, basing it
upon laws more or less empirical or fictional, while in the second period
his mind and heart wavered between the two methods, impelled by a
supreme effort at harmonizing them. He sought a point of union be
tween the subjective and the objective, between mind active and mind
passive, according to Kant’s fine conception. His idea was grand but
premature, and his task being placed beyond his power by fatal natural
laws, he had to succumb before the force of circumstances—that is to
say, through the failure of scientific data upon such complex problems.
Still, the sociological and moral bases established by him remain im
perishable, and will serve posterity as a foundation. The objective
Philosophy remains intact, and in the third edition (1869) M. Littré
asserts that the discoveries of forty years (since its first issue) have not
altered the organizing principle of the Positive Philosophy.f Another
century, and the great encyclopaedic series will receive its final corona
tion. A fine law of nature also places an impassable limit to the
human mind, according to the stage of intellectual progress attained
by it. Kepler, after founding celestial geometry, failed in celestial dy
namics, holding the theological conception that “ angels ” guided the
movements of the stars. His successor, Descartes, also failed, holding
the metaphysical conception in his renowned vortices. The positivity
of celestial mechanics was only reached by Newton’s discovery of the
law of universal Gravitation.
I will conclude by saying that cerebral attacks, similar to Comte’s
often occur. “ Many celebrated men,” adds M. Littré, “ have had men
tal shocks which greatly modified their characters.” Saint Paul, on
the way to Damascus, affords one of the most memorable examples.
* Letter to J. S. Mill in “ Auguste Comte et la Philosophie positive,” by Littré,
p. 460.
f “ Preface d’un disciple,” p. vii.
�168
THE
THREE
MENTAL
CRISES.
Mr. Lewes also says : “ There is nothing remarkable in the fact that Lucretius and
Cowper wrote their immortal poems during the lucid intervals of frequent cerebral
attacks. The philosophy of Lucretius has indeed been often affiliated on his in
sanity ; but the sweet piety, the delicate humor, and the sustained excellence of
Cowper have not been thus branded, and they show that the mind is lucid in its
lucid intervals. The list of illustrious madmen is a long one. Lucretius, Mahomet,
Loyola, Peter the Great, Haller, Newton, Tasso, Swift, Cowper, Donizetti, sponta
neously occur as the names of men whose occasional eclipse by no means darkens
the splendor of their achievements. To these we must add the name of Auguste
Comte, assured that, if Newton once suffered a cerebral attack without thereby for
feiting our veneration for the ‘ Principia ’ and the ‘ Optics,’ Comte may have like
wise suffered without forfeiting his claims on our veneration for the ‘ Philosophic po
sitive.’ But the best answer to this ignoble insinuation is the works themselves. If
they are the products of madness, one could wish that madness were occasionally
epidemic.” *
These temporary cerebral perturbations of great men should in no wise astonish
us, as we can trace their existence in Humanity according to the similar laws of
physical and moral phenomena, individual and collective. In fact, in 1841, Auguste
Comte pointed out that our opinions, while “ having ceased to be purely theological
without being able to become wholly scientific, constitute the metaphysical state,
regarded as a sort of transitional chronic malady, belonging to this impassable
phase of our mental evolution, individual and collective.” f Comte, in 1852, de
clared that, “ since the original dissolution of the ancient theocracies, modern
anarchy constitutes only the last term of an immense perturbation.” Consequent
ly, “ analyzed cerebrally, the occidental malady constitutes a chronic madness, es
sentially intellectual but habitually complicated with moral reactions, and often
accompanied with physical outbreaks.” J In fine, in 1855, he was still more explicit
in his letter to Dr. Audiffrent, in which he resumes the synthetic theory of diseases
by the sociological definition of the brain as an instrument for the action of the
dead upon the living. Occidental anarchy constitutes a true disease consisting in a
continuous insurrection of the living against the dead, which tends to produce a
chronic disturbance of cerebral economy. Comte connects medicine with morality,
by formulating the subjective definition of the brain thus : The double and perma
nent placenta between man and Humanity. By “ double ” he means the two simul
taneous orders of subjective relations to the past on one side, and to the future on
the other. The gravity of the disease tends to break the placenta in two ways. §
In accordance with these ideas of Comte, I propose the following definitions :
“ Mental diseases result from a failure of moral unity between two cerebra, that
is, between the individual cerebrum and the collective, between man and Human
ity.”
“ The mental diseases of nations result from a want of moral unity between the
worn-out past and the developing future.”
Individual moral perturbations, being more complex, depend simultaneously
upon the collective moral perturbations of nations, and these upon those of Human
ity at large.
Though thirty years have elapsed, it would be impossible to trace with more
fidelity the state of Europe in 1870. We are perhaps on the verge of a profound
revolutionary crisis, occasioned by political chicanery, and this evening the ultima
tum of the Emperor Napoleon to Prussia will decide the fate of Europe. Yes,
anarchy of the heart and head is deeply rooted in the bosom of our families, in
our political circles, on the rostrum, in our scientific institutions, at the church.
We are everywhere rushing against the revolutionary debris, bequeathed to us by
that portion of the eighteenth century which followed the great French crisis of 1789.
Nothing can satisfy our desires, our doubts, and our restlessness, incessantly re
newed. Always the same question without reply :—What can we do? This crisis
will only be terminated by the installation of the new spiritual power demonstrated
by science, in place of the old revealed and imposed power. On a future occasion,
I will examine the reasons which may have caused Comte to change his method in
Politics and in Religion, as well as the objections raised by M. Littré.*
§
* “ The Fortnightly Review.” 1866, vol. iii, p. 394.
f “ Cours de Philosophie positive.” Vol. V, p. 277. ■
j “ Système de Politique positive.” Vol. II, pp. 458, 459.
§ Robinet, “Notice sur l’œuvre et sur la vie d’Auguste Comte.” Paris, 1864, p
533.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Good and evil - their origin
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Poey, Andre
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [153]-168 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. Includes bibliographical references.
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G5421
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Ethics
Evil
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Conway Tracts
Good and Evil